Purpose and Practice of the United Panther Movement (2014)

Why We Must Build the UPM

Racism is not going to go away, nor is repression, nor the continued cycles of mounting crises created by the capitalist-imperialist system. These can only be ended by proletarian socialist revolution. The masses are not going to be quick to recognize and take this path. They have to see its benefits to be convinced that it is the only way forward first.

While they have an inexhaustible enthusiasm for learning and liberation on the one hand, they also burn out and get demoralized and defeatist on the other. The struggle advances in waves with high tides and ebbs.

One of the causes of burnout and demoralization by the masses and even those who’ve aspired to lead them in struggle is the idealist expectation that things will move forward in a straight line. Terrorism and the fascist approach are expressions of impatience and beliefs that individualist acts will inspire mass insurrection.

Revolution is a lot more complicated than that. It is the overthrow of one class by another, not merely reshuffling the deck and replacing one oppressor from the enemy ruling class for another. To become the ruling class itself, the proletariat (the wage slaves) have to transform themselves and other poor and oppressed sectors, as well as defeat and suppress the bourgeoisie (the capitalist ruling class) and their armed protectors.

The proletariat have to seize control of the means of production to end their exploitation and they have to take and hold state power to carry out the transformation of all social relations and to prevent the restoration of the overthrown order.

The struggle of the masses and revolution must advance wave upon wave until the state has been replaced altogether by the will of the people and the absence of exploitation and the old social relations generated by it.

Revolutionaries must persevere in putting forward this message and applying the mass line while building a revolutionary mass consciousness of the need for proletarian socialist revolution.

Austerity is the order of the day. The ruling elite are going to keep putting the crisis they create on the backs of the people and relying upon repression to maintain power.

This is where understanding the principal contradiction of 21st century imperialism comes into play. What is most important to them is maintaining and consolidating their global hegemony, no matter how much chaos, bloodshed, poverty, suffering and anarchy it unleashes.

They are not going to cut military spending nor raise taxes on the rich. They are going to keep pushing the middle class down and cutting social welfare spending, wages and so on. They are going to keep building and packing the prisons, keep shooting down poor kids in the streets, keep blaming their victims for the suffering forced on them by the system, and all of it until critical mass is reached.

They are locked into doing what will generate the highest rate of profit – and can’t do anything else. So we know how things are going to go and are complicit in all this to the extent we continue to do nothing or to do what is convenient for us yet ineffective in struggling to repolarize power and end these oppressions.

The only variable lies in what we will do and when we will do it. The time to build the United Panther Movement and root it in the oppressed communities and prisons is now.

UPM Structure and Strategy

We should build the UPM in three parts: Black Panthers, Brown Panthers and White Panthers.

Black Panthers: Should be our main focus and this has three parts; Blacks in the imperialist countries, Blacks in Afrika and Blacks in other 3rd world countries.

Brown Panthers: This includes all other people of color. Within this body groups may also identify with the Tiger symbol.

White Panthers: This includes poor whites and working class white youth.

Our primary focus should be on building the UPM broadly and then within that network developing the vanguard Panther party out of its most advanced core elements.

Our basic slogan should be: “Build A Worldwide United Front Against Capitalist-Imperialism, Racism and Repression!”

Our basic strategy should be: “Transform the Razor Wire Plantations into Schools of Liberation and the Oppressed Communities into Base Areas of Cultural, Social and Political Revolution in the Context of Building A Worldwide United Front Against Capitalist-Imperialism and Repression!”

The UPM should be built as a primarily legal and aboveground movement with a strong emphasis on serve the people survival programs and political education. It should be based everywhere there are concentrations of poor and oppressed people and primarily in the urban centers and the oppressed communities around them. This doesn’t rule out rural poverty pockets like Appalachia, but our main constituency is the urban poor.

The UPM should be a big umbrella with diverse elements within it to include every faction within the oppressed communities: religious groups, lumpen street organizations, cultural groups, wimyn’s groups, student groups etc.

People should primarily see the UPM in terms of its community service and its political analysis, which comes from the Party at its core. In waging a protracted struggle, it must endure and avoid being suckered into premature showdowns with the imperialists’ armed agents of repression.

In this it must emulate the turtle who wins the race by steady perseverance and never losing sight of the goal. The important thing is to keep growing and spreading to more communities linking them together intercommunally, to sink deep roots among the masses and win their loyal support and identification with and as Panthers.

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BOOKS BY KEVIN “RASHID” JOHNSON

PANTHER VISION

Panther Vision: Essential Party Writings and Art of Kevin "Rashid" Johnson, Minister of Defense New Afrikan Black Panther Party

"The original Black Panther Party for Self-Defense challenged the prevailing socio-political and economic relationship between the government and Black people. The New Afrikan Black Panther Party is building on that foundation, and Rashid’s writings embrace the need for a national organization in place of that which had been destroyed by COINTELPRO and racist repression. We can only hope this book reaches many, and serves to herald and light a means for the next generation of revolutionaries to succeed in building a mass and popular movement.” --Jalil Muntaqim, Prisoner of War

"Your mission (should you decide to accept it) is to buy multiple copies of this book, read it carefully, and then get it into the hands of as many prisoners as possible. I am aware of no prisoner-written book more important than this one, at least not since George Jackson s Blood In My Eye. Revolutionaries and those considering the path of progress will find Kevin Rashid Johnson s Defying The Tomb an important contribution to their political development." --Ed Mead, former political prisoner, George Jackson Brigade

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